VUT green team scoops Eco Award

The Vaal University of Technology’s Green Campus Initiative (GCI) team scooped the EcoRunway Award during this year’s 6th Annual Green Campus Initiative Conference hosted at the University of Western Cape.

The team also received two nominations for Greenest Student of the year. The conference, which was themed “Save Water”, had GCI teams from various universities across the country participate and present their ideas for the practical implementation of green campus programmes within their respective institutions.

VUT caters to over 16 000 students, making it a challenge to maintain a clean and green environment.

Pakiso Tjotjo of the VUT Green Campus Initiative says that VUT GCI wants to create a sense of pride within the students and involving them in the GCI is a great start, because they take full ownership of the projects they come up with and are able to use their creative expression to implement these ideas.

“We want to inspire and instil responsibility amongst our students, to preserve the environment that we live in by keeping it clean and to save water and electricity. Our future plans include creating an app that will encourage students to join the GCI movement and help us work towards creating a clean and environmentally friendly campus by placing more garbage bins around campus. These bins will be visible because we plan to creatively design and paint them. We’re also in the process of planting a vegetable garden at the residences to assist in poverty alleviation. The vegetables will be for our underprivileged students. We also want to create awareness on saving water and electricity through campaigns which we’ll run on campus. We have big plans, and we’re constantly working hard and smart to achieve them,” said Pakiso.